You need to sell this idea better. Right now it feels very much like a solution without a problem. You talk about stickiness briefly, but without specific and concrete use cases I'm not convinced. You might want to investigate thesixtyone. They use an achievement system quite like what you describe.
Ask them how they think it works, and whether their traffic would be the same if they removed the feature, etc. More data is great, because the argument doesn't catch my eye right now.
I've used a couple services with badges like that, but I've always ended up finding it stupid after not too long. You might end up accidentally alienating people who just want to use a service without feeling like it's a competition. Once I started associating a useful service with the time wastingness of a game, I started reevaluating whether I really wanted to use the service after all. There are games I far prefer playing, that I could just play instead if I really needed validation that badly.
If a feature is improving traffic numbers for the site owner, but not really improving the core usefulness of the application, I think it is a net loss.
This is something we are definitely thinking about. Part of the problem is that there aren't alot of application out there with a system like this so it's hard to measure the effect at the moment. Right now It's just sort of a guess. We'd definitely be interested in working with anyone that would like to test this with us to see what the effects are.
Comments
You need to sell this idea better. Right now it feels very much like a solution without a problem. You talk about stickiness briefly, but without specific and concrete use cases I'm not convinced. You might want to investigate thesixtyone. They use an achievement system quite like what you describe.
Ask them how they think it works, and whether their traffic would be the same if they removed the feature, etc. More data is great, because the argument doesn't catch my eye right now.
I've used a couple services with badges like that, but I've always ended up finding it stupid after not too long. You might end up accidentally alienating people who just want to use a service without feeling like it's a competition. Once I started associating a useful service with the time wastingness of a game, I started reevaluating whether I really wanted to use the service after all. There are games I far prefer playing, that I could just play instead if I really needed validation that badly.
If a feature is improving traffic numbers for the site owner, but not really improving the core usefulness of the application, I think it is a net loss.
This is something we are definitely thinking about. Part of the problem is that there aren't alot of application out there with a system like this so it's hard to measure the effect at the moment. Right now It's just sort of a guess. We'd definitely be interested in working with anyone that would like to test this with us to see what the effects are.